apologizing for the truth

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  • 8/8/2019 Apologizing for the Truth

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    Apologizing for the Truth

    By Peter Levenda

    Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) apologized yesterday for his remarks concerning aclassified FBI report on the conditions at Guantanamo Bay, where ourgovernment is holding some terror suspects, as basically indistinguishable fromreports of prison conditions in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Gulag, or underCambodia's Pol Pot regime.

    He was roundly attacked for those remarks by the Republicans in Congress,because -- they said -- he was comparing "our troops" to the worst sadists anddictators of the 20th century.

    Ladies and gentlemen, there is spin ... and there is "spin". In some cases, spinseems to go widdershins instead of deosil, anti-clockwise instead of clockwise.

    The spin in this case is purely satanic, and most Americans are not payingenough attention to how opinion is being manipulated.

    Durbin was precise in his remarks. He said that anyone reading the FBI reportand not knowing the context would assume it was a report on conditions in thosetotalitarian regimes. And he is correct. Those of you who do not believe this needonly read the books that have been published in the last fifty years or so on theSoviet prison system, the interrogation of prisoners at Gestapo headquarters, orthe reports by observers like Lifton and others on Chinese interrogation andbrainwashing. At the time, our government officials hailed those publications asaccurate descriptions of how godless Communists behaved. Their data was neverquestioned.

    Can you say "deja vu"?

    So does that mean that Senator Durbin is anti-American? Does that mean he hasequated our troops to Hitler's SS? Of course not. But in our new, double-speakBrave New World anyone who questions what is going on -- what actions andpolicies are being underwritten, promoted, and legalized by our presentgovernment -- is unpatriotic, maligns our underpaid, undersupported troops inthe field, and borders on the treasonous.

    To fully support our men and women in military service, our Congress should beat the forefront of ensuring that they are not forced or encouraged to perform thetype of bestial acts we have seen and heard about since the invasion of Iraqbegan. We are Americans. We are better than this. We have vast resources at ourdisposal for gathering intelligence and fighting our wars. Yet, we are brutalizingnot only the prisoners but also our own troops by these antiquated interrogationmethods and psychotic psychological techniques. Because America is gettingtired of this endless campaign, a campaign without clear goals, based on badintelligence and outright deception, and with no identifiable exit strategy, theadministration is turning on anyone who raises a question, demandsaccountability, or is just plain exhausted by years of institutionalized lying. We

    have been through all of this before. It was called Vietnam then.

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    Republican leaders are insisting that in this "war on terror" we need to take a no-holds barred approach to interrogation. That the Geneva Convention does notapply, since the terrorists are not combatants in the ordinary sense. That laws ofhuman decency be abrogated in the name of American security. As you know,those laws are being abrogated at home as well as abroad, with the Patriot Actamong other developments.

    Yet, the more we become like the terrorists, the more we lose to the terrorists.Our interrogation methods -- however extreme -- are not yielding the intelligencewe need. They are not raising our security levels here at home or abroad,because our actions paint us as sadistic, blood-thirsty criminals in the eyes of therest of the world. We are busy curtailing our freedoms here at home even as wetrample like a wounded elephant abroad.

    The events of September 11, 2001 have become our Reichstag fire.

    The spectacle of Senator Durbin being forced (presumably by his own party) to

    apologize, even obliquely, for his remarks is a sickening example of what hashappened to informed dissent in the United States. The Republicans insist thatDurbin's remarks give aid and comfort to the enemy. As a wiser man than I oncesaid, in war the first casualty is Truth.

    Truth. Yesterday, Senator Durbin intoned its eulogy.

    Source: http://sinisterforces.info/blog/index.php?/archives/8-Apologizing-for-the-Truth.html